Tag: media

A pivotal moment for the New York Times

Media
by George Salamon

BY GEORGE SALAMON / For regular readers of our paper of record, the following sentences in an article about the slaughter of Egyptian civilians, “U.S. Condemns Crackdown but Announces No Policy Shift” by Mark Landler and Michael P. Gordon on Aug. 14, must have been one of those “I can’t believe what I just read in the Times” moments: “But Mr. Kerry (U.S. Secretary of State) announced no punitive measures while President Obama, vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, had no public reaction. As his chief diplomat was speaking of a ‘pivotal moment for Egypt,’ the president was playing golf at a private club.”

Open letter to media takes issue with coverage of Latin America

Media
by Compiled for GJR

COMPILED FOR GJR / The supposed “irony” of whistleblower Edward Snowden seeking asylum in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela has become a media meme. Numerous articles, op-eds, reports and editorials in outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR and MSNBC have hammered on this idea since the news first broke that Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador. It was a predictable retread of the same meme last year, when Julian Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and the Ecuadorian government deliberated his asylum request for months. Of course, any such “ironies” would be irrelevant even if they were based on factual considerations.

The Zimmerman trial and race in the media: The usual soapbox derby

Media
by George Salamon

BY GEORGE SALAMON / On July 16, after the Zimmerman trial had concluded with a “not guilty” verdict and a small army of experts and selected citizens were wrangling over the implications on television, you could have found these two statements in the media: “We’ve Had Our Conversation on Race. Now We Need One on Guns,” Alec Macgillis proclaimed in the New Republic. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Ekon N. Yankah, a professor of law at the Cordoza School of Law in New York, complained that “we are tired of hearing that race is a conversation for another day.” I have to agree with the professor.

Eyes wide shut: The New York Times reports on Egypt

Media
by George Salamon

The headline on Page 1 in the 4th of July New York Times proclaimed that “Ambassador Becomes Focus of Egyptians’ Mistrust of U.S.” Ambassador Anne Patterson’s face and name were indeed featured on many signs among the anti-Morsi protesters on Tahrir Square before his ouster by the Egyptian army. But the suggestion that she, and not President Obama, was the “focus” of anti-American rage (for our government’s closeness to and endorsement of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party) belies the evidence available from photographs – photographs our paper of record and others in the mainstream media chose to ignore.